Top Menu

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

På Taket amphibian Saab 96 at Red Bull Rapids competition

The Red Bull Rapids annual event organised by Red Bull is challenging people to invent, design and create strange and funny "boats" which are competing each other at a one day competition. It happens in many countries around the world, including Slovakia.

This time our Puppy Hunters Saab Club decided to attend with a Saab car. Not with "just a regular Saab" but with the famous På Taket (on the roof) reminding on Erik Carlsoon and his legendary Saab 96 being several times on the roof.

The expression "Carlsson on the roof" originated from the children's story Karlsson på taket by Astrid Lindgren, in which a Karlsson character lived on the roof of an apartment building. The name was given to Carlsson as a result of his habit of occasionally rolling a rally car onto its roof. In the Safari Rally, he even rolled the car intentionally, to escape from a mud pool. When journalists later doubted his story, he proved it by rolling the car again. [src: wikipedia]

So we decided to make a custom red Erik Carlsson Saab 96 model, which can swim on the roof and compete on the event. A 1:1 scale would be too much, but the model is pretty large, it still has to carry four mariners. The size of the vessel is reduced a bit (length x width x height) : 2,7m x 1,4m x 1m vs. original 4m x 1,57m x 1,47m.

The size is a compromise between hosting 4 people on board and transportation to the place of the competition. One of us has an old VW Bus, which can carry our Saab vessel wherever needed.

Actually this is a third amphibian (as we could find) Saab :) It can travel on the road as well as swim on the water. It has wheels on which it rides to the water and than with a bit of magic combined with muscle power converts itself into a vessel.

It's in advanced stage of creation. The finalising stage is right now and a bit hectic, because the event is this Saturday, 15.9.2012 in a rafting channel at Cunovo, near Bratislava.